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The present study examined how language experience relates to associative thinking using Forward Flow, a metric that captures how far a thought sequence diverges semantically from an initial concept. Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals completed a free association task in each of their respective languages. Greater vocabulary and language dominance predicted higher Forward Flow, indicating more semantically distant thought sequences. Among bilinguals, Forward Flow was higher in the dominant language than in the non-dominant language, suggesting that the conceptual associations bilinguals make depend on the language of retrieval. The associations participants generated were also influenced by idiosyncratic features of the languages they spoke, such as compounding, semantic ambiguity, and phonology. Our findings suggest that individual language experience and language-specific properties are linked to associative thinking, highlighting the role of language in the conceptual associations people make.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0359889","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,5]],"date-time":"2026-10-05T17:36:36Z","timestamp":1791221796000},"page":"e0359889","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Free flowing thought in bilinguals and monolinguals: How language experience and lexical properties influence word associations"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"21","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4761-6254","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Matias","family":"Fernandez-Duque","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Northwestern University","place":["Evanston, United States of America"],"department":["Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Viorica","family":"Marian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Northwestern University","place":["Evanston, United States of America"],"department":["Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders"]},{"name":"Northwestern University","place":["Evanston, United States of America"],"department":["Department of Psychology"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"pone.0359889.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"220","DOI":"10.1037\/h0048850","article-title":"The associative basis of the creative process","volume":"69","author":"SA Mednick","year":"1962","journal-title":"Psychol Rev"},{"issue":"4","key":"pone.0359889.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"755","DOI":"10.1002\/jocb.1521","article-title":"Are bilinguals more creative than monolinguals? 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